Hancock – in cinemas now
Having been maligned by many reviewers upon its release a few weeks ago, the DVD Rental crew weren’t expecting much from Hancock, the latest Will Smith sci-fi action outing, but we left our local cinema pleasantly surprised.
Vigilante superhero crimefighter John Hancock (Smith) can fly, pick up cars, stop trains with an outstretched hand, is impervious to bullets, beatings, rocket propelled grenades, but is unloved by his public, who repeatedly refer to him as ‘asshole’, as his actions invariably cause more damage to his adopted hometown of LA than the criminals he sets out to apprehend – think the first five minutes of Team America: World Police and you’re kind of on the right lines. He is also an alcoholic smartarse. ‘I can smell the liquor on your breath,’ snaps one irate rescuee. ‘Well, that’s ’cause I’ve been drinking, bitch.’
Admittedly the various trailers for the movie are pretty misleading – Hancock appeared to be a satirical send up of the slew of superhero movies we’ve been bombarded with ever since the first X-Men movie opened the floodgates of the economy of scale in 2000. The trailers saw Hancock screw up in spectacular style; he rescues a beached whale by throwing it back into the ocean – only for it to strike the mast of a yacht sailing on the horizon and capsize it.
The first half of the film lives up to the expectations of the trailer, with some genuinely funny moments, but it’s when Hancock begins to walk the road to redemption that the laughs stop for a while. Nice-guy PR machine Ray played by Jason Bateman (Teen Wolf Too, Arrested Development, Juno) offers to give Hancock’s public image a makeover after he saves his life. Hancock then invariably ends up hitting on Bateman’s beautiful, domestic goddess wife Mary, played by Charlize Theron, who of course, played Bateman’s love interest in Arrested Development.
Following this is an unexpected twist which really upends the proceedings; more could have been made of the backstory to have made the film a more solid proposal, and Hancock also suffers from some decidedly unsubtle product placement (YouTube, FedEx) which rates pretty highly on the Wayne’s World scale. If anything, the film has suffered from a lack of support required for it to become an all-time great – the script lingered in development hell for over a decade. Whilst not high grade Adamantium, Hancock isn’t cinematic Kryptonite either.
